The Concept of 'Love'
by Neo the Saiyan angel
Summary: Diva asks Amshel a simple yet overly complex question.


"How do you feel about me?"

Amshel stopped in his musings, confused, as Diva suddenly asked the question. She had been dancing in the garden and singing to the cocoons that housed her children. Unnoticed by him, she had wandered over to the metal filigreed table where he was diligently working on the opus that his mistress would sing for the world. A manic sparkle was in her eyes as she watched him, gauging his response.

Amshel put his pen down as he thought on the question. It was an unusual one from the normally child-like chiropteran who rarely thought ahead or did any introspection. It was a question more apropos for her other chevaliers, ones more emotional available than him.

"Amshel! What. Do. You. Feel. For. Me." Her impatience was obvious, her nails digging into and bending the metal table. She demanded an answer, and Amshel felt the chevalier part of himself rush with emotion.

He immediately squashed it. Amshel wasn't a beast controlled by emotion. He was the master of himself.

And yet…

"That is a very complicated question," he started, lips puckering in momentary thought. His words deliberate, he said, "I feel...like you are the most important person. To me, to the world. You are my most prized possession."

"Really?" The bald hope and joy in her tone struck him. Her simple mind, something he found rather intriguing in how it worked, seemed to misconstrue some of his words.

He clarified, "You are unique. I wish I had you all to myself again, like we were in the beginning. Before I became your chevalier. My own precious songbird, a specimen of perfection to study in solitude together."

"Hm…" Her brow furrowed in thought. Diva didn't seem to understand. He resisted sighing; her childish nature was blocking his probably overly complicated explanation.

"I am completely and utterly devoted to you," he said simply. "I cannot see myself serving any other purpose than furthering your goals and studying you until I understand anything and everything about you."

Diva tilted her head, then carelessly asked, "Do you love me?"

He blinked slowly at the question. Something so simple, yet beyond complex in the relationship between them. Somehow Diva still managed to surprise him, even now.

"That, Diva, makes me delve into what, exactly, is the concept of 'love'," he began in a lecturing tone. Amshel couldn't help it; it was practically second nature to him when explaining something he considered to be academic. "What is love? Is it the way you feel? The way you act, demonstrating time and again your pure devotion to the other person? Slavish, rabid worship? A warm demeanor?" He shook his head. "I see 'love' as a silly little attempt to justify being kind to others. A simple evolutionary tool that people try to explain it away, like it isn't some irrational thought or feeling."

"So you _don't _love me," Diva said, a frown beginning to cross her face. It suddenly struck him that this was a _very_ important question she was posing and looking for an answer for. Diva was probably romanticizing the idea. As foolish as it seemed to him, it was something she cared about. That, in turn, made it something he cared about too.

"I...wouldn't exactly say that," Amshel carefully noted. "I find you charming. I'm irresistibly drawn to you, beyond my chevalier nature. You being _you_, your anatomy and your very being are something that would keep me around to the end of everything. I would never leave you, nor would I betray you to anyone. I would do anything in my power for you."

"Including love me?" She seemed to be stuck on the idea. His explanations went clear over her head, as he should have expected. Diva was never one for philosophical debates.

"In my own way, yes, I suppose I love you," he decided to begrudgingly admit. "As a chevalier, as a man, as everything I am. You intrigue me, keep me guessing, stimulate me into thoughts and hypotheses that I could never have dreamed before I met you and cared for you."

"I think you're the only one," his mistress said, her eyes darting towards the pleasant little house they all lived in. "The others...they aren't like you. I think they're just here because I made them chevalier. But _you_...you took care of me from the beginning. Always feeding me, looking after me." She leaned across the table and cupped his cheek. "I would trust you with anything." Then she perked up, a thought clearly occurring to her. "My children. If anything happens to me, I want you, solely you, to take care of my children."

_That_ took him by surprise. "You would entrust your children to me?"

"Why wouldn't I? You love me. You would do your best to not fail me. And my children are the most important things to me." Stating it like that, it seemed like a no-brainer.

This time he was the one to look towards the house. "And what of the others?"

"What about them?" Diva asked in her normal innocently naive voice. "They don't love me like you love me. They do what I say, but _you're _the one I would trust with them." Carelessly waving her hand, she said, "If they try to interfere, go ahead and kill them."

Amshel turned back to Diva and nodded. "I understand."

He had to admit, the very idea of being the lone person in charge of two fresh specimens excited him. He could study them with his more experienced mind, no longer under a different scientist with their own ideas and experiments to perform. There were several questions he had now, about the growth cycle of chiropterans. This way, he could get all his answers and more.

Amshel briefly considered Joel's method of segregation before rejecting it. That was pure behavioral research. What _he_ was focused on was biological. At what stage could they produce chevalier? Was their blood poisonous to each other from the beginning? How early could the others' chevalier impregnate them? And _their_ children…four children to work with then. Could the chevalier of one set of twins impregnate the other set of queens? The questions buzzed in his head, begging for answers.

And answers he would get.

"Now! Amshel!" Diva clapped her hands together, tilting her head to look at his papers. "How soon can I begin my performance?"

Finally, an easy question. "I'm nearly finished with the chorus. Then it's simply figuring out a pleasant bridge to loop back around to the beginning of the chorus again. After all, it _will_ take time for your voice to take effect on every human listening."

"Good!" She took the first, finished page and looked it over. Then she began to sing, her voice carrying across the entire garden and, likely, to the house.

Amshel allowed himself to get lost in the song. It was exactly how he'd pictured it. Her beautiful operatic voice uplifted the notes into the art piece it was.

He hadn't been lying or exaggerating about his feelings for her. Amshel was completely enthralled with the chiropteran queen.

Diva, his mistress. The object of his devotion. He would do anything for her.

Anything.


End file.
